Tornado

***I am writing this more for myself then all of you - Saturday was a crazy day, and I wanted to document what happened.... sorry if this is really long****

Well, we have had an eventful few days. Saturday evening, just after 5:00, our small town was hit by an F-2 tornado, with estimated winds of 130 MPH. We are all fine, our home is fine, and everyone I know is fine, but it was a scary day for me. Ray had to work all day, so the kids and I went shopping with my mom for the afternoon. After shopping, we headed back to my parents' house. There were some big storms coming, so my dad and I were watching the weather. Several tornado warnings had been issued all over the state, including one for my county, but the storm was well to the north of my house, so I didn't worry about it. There was another very large storm heading in our direction that was causing tornado warnings to the east, and it was estimated to be in our area in about 45 minutes.

I decided to pack up the kids and head home. It was already almost 5:00, we needed dinner, and I knew that Pooky would be ready for an early bedtime. It was about a 10 minute drive home, so we packed up and left. It had just started to rain a bit, really big drops, and the sky in my rearview mirror was black. I started to feel a bit nervous, thinking maybe I just should have stayed at my parents', but it was too late to turn back, unless I wanted to drive directly into the storm.

I turned onto my street, came around the curve about 4-5 houses away from mine, when a huge gust of wind blew in, and the rain started pouring down. I quickly pulled into the garage, and closed the garage door. As I was getting Emmy unbuckled, I heard a very loud sound of something hitting the aluminum garage door, which freaked me out - turned out to be golf ball sized hail, which fortunately didn't last long. I grabbed the kids and we ran in the house, just as the electricity went out. The storm was pretty bad, but I really didn't think too much about it. I was trying to find batteries for the radio, and couldn't find any. I was totally unprepared.
My cell phone rang, and it was Ray, telling me that he had just gotten a message from my dad wanting to make sure that we were okay. Just after I left their house, they got hit, and there was some minor damage in their area, mostly trees down and a few shingles blown off. I immediately called my dad back, and started lighting a few candles.

As I hung up the phone, I turned around to see Pooky sitting on top of my kitchen table, happily flinging papers onto the floor. As I headed over to get home down, he fell off, landing directly on his face on the linoleum. Of course he screamed, and I took him back to Emmy's room trying to get some light to see if he was okay. His nose was bleeding a bit, and I freaked out - here we are in the middle of a bad storm, Ray is not here, the power is out, and my son has a head injury. I called Ray, then my friend Shawna (Baby R's mom, who is a nurse), but didn't get an answer. Just as I hung up the phone, Shawna's van came flying into my driveway, horn honking. I scooped up Pook and ran to the door where her husband, Greg, was standing there looking frazzled and asked if I was alright.

"No!" I exclaimed, and started going on and on about Pook's fall, then he stopped me and said that they had just gotten home, minutes behind the tornado that went through about a quarter-mile away. I had no idea. Shawna knew that I was home alone with the kids, and she told Greg to come check on me even before they went home.

The kids and I quickly grabbed our stuff and went to their house, just 2 houses away, more because I was freaked out about everything that had just happened, and they were telling me about how bad it was in town, which is really just up the street from us.

After the storm subsided, and Pook's nose was checked out (he was acting totally fine after just a couple of minutes, playing, running, like normal), Greg and I did a quick drive up the street to check out some of the damage, and I was really surprised - trees were snapped in half or uprooted, power lines were lying all over the place, there was damage to several buildings and houses. On the far edge of my neighborhood, there was some bad damage as well, but on our side, it was fine. I later found out that the damage wasn't nearly as bad as it was just outside of town - total devistation along the road that I had just driven home on minutes before the tornado hit. If I had been just 3 minutes later, I would have been in the middle of a tornado, which really scared me. Also the fact that it hit so close to home was scary, and I had no clue what was going on.

Surprisingly, the electricity came back on that night, but our cable has been out until tonight, so this is the first time I have had Internet in 3 days - I was going crazy without it! A bunch of pictures of the damage -



This is just up the street, along the road that I had just driven home on - this used to be a forest of pine trees, which was pretty much leveled.







































































These last 5 pictures were taken by Ray's friend at work, who lives on the street with the other damage I just showed - unbelievable.


I did learn that I should be a bit more cautious - I was really not worried at all about this storm coming, and we took no precautions - if the storm had been just a quarter-mile to the north, these pictures could have been my house, which is very scary. I also need to prepare - I need to buy a ton of batteries and such. We have a weather alert radio, but it is useless when the power goes out and there are no batteries in it (duh).
I am so thankful that we are fine, and we had no damage. Please pray for the families all over South Carolina who did suffer damage - there were several other tornadoes all over the state just like this one.